My advice: Institutions and professional
societies should hire more women in executive positions and invite more women to
be keynote speakers to reflect the number
of women in the biomedical workforce.

WHEN I WAS 6 months pregnant anddirecting an archaeological project, I wasoften confronted by male landowners andvillage chiefs asking directions to the PI.

“You are speaking to her,” I would say. The
responses were guffaws, disbelief, and an
insistence that I didn’t understand the
question. Frustrated, each abruptly turned
away and approached my male crewmem-bers, who pointed back to me. At least one
said, “But she’s a woman.”

My advice: Rely on patience and humor,
and focus on the passion that drove you to
your discipline in the first place. Altering
a cultural habit or tradition is like shifting the tides—it takes perseverance. Over
time, your expertise and integrity in your
research will be recognized, trusted, and
respected by the local community.

6 JANUARY 2017 • VOL 355 ISSUE 6320 23 SCIENCE sciencemag.orgI AM A MUSLIM who wears a niqab thatcovers my face. My niqab doesn’t preventme from doing or teaching science. Still,even in a Muslim country like Egypt, I wasforbidden from teaching an internationalprogram because of my religious clothing.

My advice: Institutions and professional
societies should make clear that researchers have the right to follow their religious
traditions, as long as those traditions do
not prevent the researchers from doing
their jobs.

Basant A. Ali

Department of Chemistry, Alexandria University,
Alexandria, Egypt.

Email: basant_walieldeen@alex-sci.edu.eg

A FEW DAYS after September 11th, 2001,
I was walking around the campus of the
University of Michigan and a woman yelled
out, “I know you bombed us!” Until that
moment, I had not realized my brown skin
and goatee might cause someone to think of
me as a terrorist threat. I was devastated.

My advice: We all need to work to makeacademic settings safe for people of allsexes and races.Prosanta Chakrabarty

MY SUPERVISOR MADE no effort to hideher resentment of my abaya and headscarf.

I ignored her insulting comments and kept
it on. I was the only student in a headscarf
attending her classes. I was proud to see
that my refusal to back down paved the
way for others.

My advice: Try your best not to succumb
to pressure. Be aware of your rights and
what to do if they are violated. Universities
should provide a safe and nondiscriminatory environment.

Name Withheld

Pakistan

AS AN INTERNATIONAL student from India,people assumed that my spoken languagewould be atrocious and that I would be ableto handle everything technical/IT related.My advice: Develop patience and a dry senseof humor.Naga Rama Kothapalli

Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry,
University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73019, USA.

Email: ramakn@ou.edu

AS A YOUNG international student with
limited English, I could see people slowly
disconnect from me while I was talking,
avoid me, or act as if I could not do anything
on my own. I was not sure how to react.

I needed a little extra help but I did notwant preferential treatment.My advice: Students and professors shouldtalk to international students directly.Universities should educate the campuscommunity about how to interact withinternational students and where to directthem for help.Felicia Olmeta-Schult

School of the Environment, Washington State
University, Vancouver, WA 98686, USA.

Email: folmeta@wsu.edu

I WAS ONCE told by a member of my lab
that PCR stands for Puertorricans Can’t
make the Reaction. Everybody laughed,
even me, but now I can see how inappropriate that comment was.

DROP OUT OF a graduate program and it
will haunt your career like a felony conviction. Despite the prejudice I’ve faced
for lacking a graduate degree, I have built
a career over many years that matches
the success of many of my colleagues
who completed graduate programs. We
express concern over the lack of public engagement in science, yet feel free
to excoriate fellow scientists who lack
advanced degrees. We need to embrace
our own diversity.

My advice: Always be the best-preparedperson in the room.Robert L. Martone

Memphis, TN 38103, USA.
Email: rlmartone@mail.com

I HAVE FOUND that people tend toprejudge research quality based on theauthors’ affiliations.

My advice: For those judging, focus more
on the research itself rather than the
rank of the researchers’ institutions. For
those being judged, high-quality research
products are the most powerful rebuttal
to affiliation prejudgment.